Bacterial relay race wins gold and award

04 November 2009 by M&C

Delft students won a gold medal and the Best Information Processing Project Award during the international Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition at MIT in Boston between 30 October and 2 November.

The Delft team developed bacteria that can pass on  messages to other bacteria in their environment. The Delft bacteria should pass on a signal to its neighbours like a baton in a relay race. This way the bacteria can process information.

Synthetic biology

Synthetic biology studies the living cell from an engineering point of view, with the aim to redesign and improve organisms. The design and construction of the ‘relay race’ bacteria  improves our understanding of bacterial communication. An example of such communication is bacterial conjugation, where bacteria transfer genetic material, which plays a role in the development of antibiotic resistance. A better understanding of this phenomenon can help scientists prevent antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

International competition

This was the second time TU Delft participated in the iGEM competition. Last year the University’s team won a gold medal as well for their “bio thermometer”. This weekend more than 1,000 participants from countries ranging from Brazil to the USA and from China to Australia flocked to Boston for the iGEM jamboree. It was the Cambridge team who won the iGEM the grand prize, the BioBrick trophy. The Cambridge team engineered a bacterial biosensor that changes colour depending on the concentration of chemical input. This competition aims to stimulate students to make biological systems themselves to develop this area further.

You can view the Delft project and an animation of the bacterial relay race on: http://2009.igem.org/Team:TUDelft